Franz Kline 19101962

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Franz Kline 1910-1962

• "You paint the way you have to in order to give.
  That's life itself, and someone will look and say
  it is the product of knowing, but it has noting
  to do with knowing, it has to do with giving."--
  Franz Kline

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Who was Franz Kline?

• Franz Kline was a member of the second abstract
  expressionist generation.
• His warm and likeable personality made him
  popular though memoirs of the time recall him as
  a hard drinker, he was not an 'ugly' drunk like
  Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
• A leading figure at the Cedar Bar, the Abstract
  Expressionists' downtown hangout in New York, he
  was also a companion of the literary beats,
  especially of Jack Kerouac.

http//artchive.com/artchive/K/kline.html
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Hot Jazz, 1940
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Painting 2
http//www.beatmuseum.org/index.html
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Background

• American Abstract Expressionist painter, born in
  Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
• His parents were both immigrants - his father, a
  saloon keeper, came from Hamburg, Germany and his
  mother from Cornwall, England.
• In 1917 his father committed suicide, and his
  mother remarried three years later.
• From 1919 to 1925 Kline attended Girard College,
  Philadelphia, an institution for fatherless boys
  which he afterwards referred to as 'an
  orphanage'.
• In retrospect, he also lengthened his stay there
  to 'eleven years', which hints that it may have
  been a traumatic experience.

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Bad accident

• Though not a big man, he was athletic and was
  Captain of Varsity Football in 1929.
• While at high school, he had an accident in
  football practice which immobilized him for a
  while, and this was when he developed an interest
  in drawing and decided to become a cartoonist and
  illustrator.

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De Kooning influences Franz Kline
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Influence

• In 1943 he met Willem de Kooning, who was to
  exercize a great influence over his art.
• It was De Kooning who in 1949 borrowed a Bell
  Opticon projector to enlarge some of his own
  drawings.
• Offered the use of it, Kline took a small
  drawing of a favorite chair and projected this on
  to canvas on such a large scale that it
  completely overlapped the edges.
• He was fascinated to note that the design, in
  these circumstances, became completely abstract.

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Evolution

• Some of his works from c.1946 were abstract or
  had a Cubist structure.
• In 1950 , made vigorous large-scale calligraphic
  abstract paintings in black and white.
• His first one-man exhibition at the Egan Gallery,
  New York, in 1950 quickly led to his recognition
  as one of the leading Abstract Expressionists.
• His calligraphic images in black and white were
  well received, and after a second show in the
  same space in 1951, Kline's reputation grew very
  rapidly.

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Tragedy

• He was not to enjoy this prosperity for very
  long. in 1961 Kline fell ill and entered Johns
  Hopkins Hospital for tests which revealed long
  standing rheumatic heart trouble, with more
  recent and dangerous deterioration of the heart
  muscle.
• He was put on a strict diet and told to curb his
  lifestyle, but his illness was incurable.
• He died in hospital in New York in May 1962.

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Week 3 Abstract ExpressionismFranz Kline

• Take a sheet of white paper or newspaper and
  create an abstract image inspired by Franz Kline.
• Remember to use thick black lines.
• When you finish, you may experiment with brighter
  colors.
• He was expressing feelings through art.